Judge Sonia Sotomayor: Americans should be alarmed by spread of drones
Americans should be more concerned about their privacy being invaded by the spread of drones, Justice Sonia Sotomayor told an Oklahoma City audience.
Speaking before a group of faculty members and students at Oklahoma City University’s law school on Sept. 11, Justice Sotomayor said “frightening” changes in surveillance technology should encourage citizens to take a more active role in the privacy debate. She said she’s particularly troubled by the potential for commercial and government drones to compromise personal privacy.
Said Justice Sotomayor:
There are drones flying over the air randomly that are recording everything that’s happening on what we consider our private property. That type of technology has to stimulate us to think about what is it that we cherish in privacy and how far we want to protect it and from whom. Because people think that it should be protected just against government intrusion, but I don’t like the fact that someone I don’t know…can pick up, if they’re a private citizen, one of these drones and fly it over my property.
Technological advances make it possible for devices to “listen to your conversations from miles away and through your walls,” Justice Sotomayor said. “We are in that brave new world, and we are capable of being in that Orwellian world, too.”
Justice Sotomayor, the first Hispanic justice, also talked about diversity on the high court bench, saying there was still room for improvement in areas beyond race, ethnicity and gender.
“We don’t have one criminal defense lawyer on our court,” she said, saying the high court also lacked justices with big law experience or who come from solo practices. “There’s something not good about that.”
“The president should be paying attention to that broader diversity question,” she said.
Justice Sotomayor, whose visit to the school coincided with 9/11 ceremonies, also spoke about lessons that Americans could draw from the 2001 terror attacks.
“I learned what being a united America was like,” the native New Yorker said, according to the Oklahoman. “I watched people see past their differences and find their commonality.”
Two former Supreme Court Justices – Souter and O’Connor – also warned of dictatorship.
So have both Republican and Democratic congress members.
And two top-level NSA officials.
A small handful of players control:
The economy (even the head of the Federal Reserve can’t disagree)
The loonies are in charge of the insane asylum … but people are so distracted and afraid we need to reclaim our freedom!
Drone pilots are over 40% more likely to be depressed, angry and hostile:
An Air Force drone personality report titled "Personality Test Scores that Distinguish U.S. Air Force Remotely Piloted Aircraft “Drone” Pilot Training Candidates" revealed some alarming personality traits in drone pilots.
"An extensive meta-analysis of the literature over the past 20 years regarding military pilot selection conducted by Paullin et al. reported personality traits relevant to performance include high levels of conscientiousness, achievement orientation, emotional stability, resilience, self-confidence, self-esteem, risk tolerance, assertiveness, self-discipline, and excitement seeking.
The emergence of RPAs (MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper RPAs) has presented new challenges to recruiting volunteers for the RPA pilot career field. In 2012, almost 1 out of 5 RPA pilot training slots went unfilled. The consistent shortfall in RPA pilot volunteers has been attributed to a variety of administrative and cultural issues. Although an exhaustive list is beyond the scope of this study, issues contributing to a lack of volunteers from among manned aircraft pilots within the USAF include lower perceived promotion rates, fewer professional development opportunities, a general lack of recognition in the form of awards and medals as compared to their manned aircraft counterparts, and a general lack of motivational interest in the RPA career field.
Discussions the authors of this study had with various personnel within the USAF aviation community (e.g., flight surgeons, manned aircraft pilots, and commanders in high-level leadership positions) revealed a wide range of opinions and perceptions regarding the characteristics of this new generation of pilot candidates. Some perceive such RPA pilot candidates to have a socially detached and isolative disposition. Others reported such candidates were more likely to be less tolerant to stress; less excitement seeking and action oriented; less assertive; more socially introverted and withdrawn; more socially compliant and straightforward; more modest and trusting; and less self-disciplined, achievement oriented, and deliberate.
It is difficult to identify the roots of these negative perceptions. Those who do report such differences tend to base their judgments on subjective impressions. However, many do not share the same perceptions or report observable differences between RPA and manned airframe pilot training candidates. As a result, the personality traits that distinguish this new generation of USAF RPA pilot training candidates are a controversial area, and objective studies are needed to substantiate or refute widely held beliefs and stereotypes"
More disturbing is the Table 1 graphic found on page 7 titled 'NEO-PI-R Domains and Facet T-Scores for USAF Pilot Training Candidates':
More than 40% exhibit signs of anxiety, anger/hostility, depression vulnerability to stress etc., are these the people we want behind the trigger or camera?
http://cryptome.org/2014/09/drone-pilot-personality.pdf
Judge Napolitano warns Americans: Our civil liberties are being destroyed by Obama:
“What has happened is the government has succeeded in terrifying Americans into believing that if they sacrificed their liberties, they would somehow be safer.” Napolitano told radio host Tim Constantine.
“Yet, some of the things that George W. Bush did on his own have been done by Barack Obama and he has used the fact that Bush did them and got away with them as a precedent. That troubles me.” the former New Jersey Superior Court Judge added.
Click here to watch the video.
Napolitano warned that the next president will be able to simply point to Obama’s actions as a way of justifying going even further, in a snowballing of authoritarianism.
“Fill-in-the-blank that will be elected in 2016 would not be above- unless it’s Rand Paul – would not be above or beneath making the same claim and using Barack Obama’s unconstitutional, unlawful, and quite candidly, murderous behavior as a precedent.” Napolitano added.
“Because when the president does something, and it becomes a precedent – meaning there is no blowback, Congress didn’t do anything about it, the courts didn’t interfere and prevent it from happening again – when the president gets away with that, it becomes a precedent for a future president.” Napolitano urged.
He opined that the actions of the President’s office and the Executive are inexplicably far removed from the Founding Fathers vision of government.
“Basically, in amending the Constitution by consent rather than by amendment, by agreeing to overlook the due process clause when the president wants to, this would turn Jefferson and Madison and even Hamilton and Adams in their graves!” Napolitano stated.
Asked how this sorry state of affairs has come about, Napolitano replied “I think the government is so afraid to admit its failures, thirteen years ago on 9/11, that in order to get our eyes off the failures, off what they did and failed to do prior to 9/11, they’ve created this universal surveillance state afterwards with the promise that it will never happen again.”
“They are fixated upon surveilling Americans and getting away with it. in my opinion Edward Snowden is a national hero for revealing the unlawful and unconstitutional behaviour of the government right under our noses.” the former judge stated.
In further interviews on Fox News, Napolitano reiterated his remarks, noting that “we are profoundly less free” as well as less safe than prior to 9/11. “Every single liberty guaranteed in the Bill of Rights has been violated with impunity by the Bush administration and by the Obama administration.” he said, adding “we now have come to the point to expect the government to spy on us.”
In an appearance with Neil Cavuto, Napolitano directly compared the NSA and DHS to the East German Stasi, in the wake of reports that DHS is coercing major retailers to monitor customer’s buying habits in an effort to uncover terrorists within the borders.
“Who wants to live in an America where the government behaves like the Stasi in East Germany or the KGB in the Soviet Union, against which we waged a Cold War because of what they did to their people.” he stated.
“What the government does doesn’t trouble us anymore, that we accept it and expect it, because we believe this nonsense that by giving up our liberties, we will somehow be kept safe.” the judge urged.
“As a result, your children and your grandchildren will grow up in a society and never know the privacy that our parents and grandparents and we knew.”
Aggressive U.S. police take hundreds of millions of dollars from motorists not charged with crimes:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2014/09/06/stop-and-seize/?hpid=z8